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A (Possible) Answer to Fragmentation in Social Assistance Policy. The Local Area Plan

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Local Welfare and the Organization of Social Services

Abstract

The national Law No. 328 aimed for the first time to create a common national framework for social policies, through the creation of an innovative organisational arrangement for the local management of social-assistance interventions (the Local Area Plan). Such novelty has been framed as an organizational answer to the endemic fragmentation which affected the system of social services provision. This chapter will define what a Local Area Plan effectively is; how it is structured and what are its competencies, underlining strengths and weaknesses. From the dialogue between the literature concerning inter-municipal cooperation and Local Area Plans we will try to define the peculiarities of the Local Area Plan as an organisational instrument for boosting agreements between municipalities and providing different shaped social services. This effort will allow us to provide a theoretical framework that will serve to interpret the Local Area Plan’s role and the elements that pertain to the greater or lesser propensity of this governance instrument to change.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In Italy, municipalities have the full and exclusive competence for the management and the supply of social services, keeping per se the so called funzione sociale (social function)

  2. 2.

    Usually it is located within the Ente capofila, but it is not rare to see a division with one municipality as Ente capofila and another in charge of the Ufficio di Piano. This can be explained by two (not alternative) factors: a) a political division of the responsibilities/leading positions within the Local Area Plan, b) the presence of a municipality within the Local Area Plan that has a better equipped administrative sector (both in terms of human resources and operative skills).

  3. 3.

    This arena is not codified and is not necessarily present in all the Local Area Plans

  4. 4.

    The concept used by Busso is borrowed from the study of Dimaggio and Powell (1983) concerning sets of organisations that, together, constitute a recognised area of institutional life and the issue of organisational isomorphism.

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  1. Department of Economics and Management, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Pietro Previtali & Eugenio Salvati

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  1. Pietro Previtali
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Correspondence to Pietro Previtali .

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Previtali, P., Salvati, E. (2021). A (Possible) Answer to Fragmentation in Social Assistance Policy. The Local Area Plan. In: Local Welfare and the Organization of Social Services. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66128-1_3

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